


Electric Cars, Cupcakes, and Apples Watches, Oh My!

by DestielsDestiny



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: BAMF Leonard "Bones" McCoy, BAMF Spock, Epic Friendship, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Leonard "Bones" McCoy & Spock Friendship, Oblivious James T. Kirk, POV Leonard McCoy, Sarcasm, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Telepathic Bond, Telepathy, apple watches, electric cars, not many cupcakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 16:52:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13150905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Jim decides to go mountain climbing in the twenty-first century, Bones learns about electrons, and Spock is a terrible backseat driver.





	Electric Cars, Cupcakes, and Apples Watches, Oh My!

“Doctor, I feel I should once again state that this is in all probability an…epically bad idea.” Spock sounds like he’s speaking a foreign language on that last, his syllables clipped and disdainful. Then again, Spock usually sounds like that by default these days. The Vulcan is apparently not any more a fan of the early part of the twenty-first century than he was the latter half of the twentieth. 

Bones risks life and limb to slide a grimace Spock’s way, “Spock, could you possibly save the backseat driving for a moment when I’m less likely to drive us off a damn mountain in this bucket of bolts?” 

The Vulcan blinked at him, slow and steady. Bones mouthed his response with him, his head dropping in a resigned groan. “Doctor, I am not in the back seat.” Yeah, he walked right into that one hadn’t he. 

“Doctor…” Bones’ head jerked up, his hands following the swivel just enough to avoid sideswiping the oncoming truck. Whipping rain and showers of gravel obscured the widescreen even further. Spock is mercifully silent while Bones’ heartbeat levels back out. 

“Perhaps it is advisable to keep one’s eyes on the road when driving such a vehicle.” Bones’ flexes his fingers on the steering wheel, eyeing the dwindling green bars winking at him merrily from the hopelessly archaic pilot’s display. 

Another bar disappears, even as a vaguely tree shaped symbol pops up above it. Rain pelts the windshield. 

“Doctor.” Bones gritted his teeth, and prayed for patience. “What is it Spock?” 

There was a slight pause. “I believe we have missed the appropriate turn off.” 

The display chooses that precise moment to merrily popup an image of a beverage mug, the oh so helpful suggestion of Take a Break! Flashing under it. 

Bones can almost hear Spock tilting his head in contemplation. “Doctor, I do not believe that now would be an opportune time to “take a break.”” 

That’s it. Next time Jim gets himself lost up a mountain in the wrong part of history, Spock so is driving. 

“Damn things powered by electrons for god’s sake!” Bones mutters to himself, wrenching them into a nearly fatal U-turn, tires skidding alarmingly on gravel as they crunch to a stop on the side of an alarmingly sheer cliff. Bone was with Spock on this one. Engineers in this period were clearly lacking in basic preservation instincts. 

Spock is strangely silent. Bones gets a sinking feeling in his chest. He slowly turns to his companion, his relief that Spock has remained warmly wrapped in several layers of scarves partly subsumed by the creeping dread in his chest. 

“Spock.” His companion did not so much as twitch a muscle. “Yes Doctor.” 

Bones hesitated a moment longer. “Please tell me we remembered to bring the map.” 

Deafening silence. Bones glared at the rain. Well wasn’t that just perfect!

00

They did not, in fact, travel all the way back in time simply to allow Jim to climb something stupidly dangerous called the Thief or Chief or some such nonsense. They did not. 

Bones feels that bears repeating often and with significant vigour. 

They travelled back in time to buy Spock a watch. There, that was a much better reason to slingshot themselves and a fifty year old Klingon spaceship around the sun for the second time this decade. 

Bones groaned, ignoring Spock’s inquiring eyebrow and Jim’s fond smile. The was getting way too old for this crap. 

The shuttle bumped against yet another rock, sending a shudder through the interior that Bones more than reciprocated through his own bones. 

“Jim.” There was a distinct pause in the reply to that. Bones may have made one or two acerbic critiques of Jim’s flying abilities over the course of this little jaunt. Just a few. 

A sigh. Okay, maybe more than few. “Yes Bones?”

“What’s the point of bucket of bolts on top of a mountain again? I thought you were here to risk your fool life climbing the darn things, not take your best friends along for a suicidal joy ride.” 

Bones feels a blanket of warmth wrap around his body at the word friend, heat spreading pleasantly from his neck outward. Spock has not so much as twitched, but in the years since the whole save-the-whales thing, Bones has learned to simply accept always having just a bit of a sense of what Spock is thinking, what he is feeling. 

He most certainly does not enjoy it, no sir. But he is used to it. 

And if Spock, the one and only time they ever discussed it, referred to it as a “not altogether unpleasant state of affairs,” well, that was fine too. More than fine even.   
Jim, blissfully oblivious to the emotional charge in the air, shot Leonard a teasing grin, “If you wanted to stay behind and guard the ship Bones, you just had to say. I’m sure Scotty and Uhura would have loved the company.” 

Scotty and Uhura, plural in all things more and more these days, had been happily gazing into each other’s eyes when Jim had dragged a silent but skeptical Spock off the Bird of Prey, Leonard following at a grumbling amble. Where Spock went these days, Bones tended to follow. Something even Jim, for all that Leonard suspected he would one day have “cavalier but sincere” written on his tombstone, had not failed to notice. 

And oh yes, they had dragged the Bounty out of mothballs for this little pleasure cruise. Bones gripped his seat with renewed intensity, scowling at the floor. This entire hairbrained plan had disaster written all over it. 

“I would point out Captain that the Doctor in no way resembles a redundant form of circular transportation mechanics.” The suddenness of the comment, coupled with the truly overwhelming vulcanness of the phrasing, meant it took Bones a moment to truly process what had just been said. 

In fact, even with the twist of dry humour lancing through his stomach with a sharp but painless intensity, Jim got it before Leonard could articulate his incredulity. 

“Spock, did you just make a joke?” 

That, Bones had handled. “Please Jim, Vulcans do not joke.”

Spock locked eyes with him over Jim’s laughing splutters, his eyebrow raising elegantly. If Bones didn’t know better, he would call that slant amused fondness. 

Spock broke eye contact first, conveying calm urgency in his mild, “Captain, if you do not adjust course in the next 5.38 seconds, you will lack sufficient altitude to clear the next bluff.” 

In the controlled scramble of controls, huffing, and cursing that followed, Leonard let himself huff an incredulous, yet genuinely happy laugh. 

This entire endeavour was the height of folly. But there was also no place Leonard McCoy would rather be than here, with his family. 

“Captain, you are still 23.5 degrees too low, you are about to crash.” “Not helping Spock!”

Even if that family was as mad as a pack of hares drunk on his Aunt Tulip’s Mint Julep. 

00

They do not crash. 

Bones attributes that far more to Spock’s side seat commentary than he does to Jim’s piloting skills. 

“They call it back seat driving around here Bones” is Jim’s completely unhelpful response to his friend’s near collapse of relief upon their reaching actual solid ground. 

Bones retaliates by placing a firm hand on their long suffering companion, and pushing him forward like a shield against their Captain’s apparent poor piloting. “Fine, whatever Jim, Spock’s driving us home then!” 

Spock obligingly backs him up. “Perhaps it would be best if I assumed the controls for the return journey Captain. You will no doubt be tired from your climbing excursion.” There are days when Bones has no problem seeing the diplomat in Spock, for all that Sarek is still a largely sporadic presence in his son’s life. 

Still, after all these years Jim’s expression is more rueful than placated, but he acquiesces with a minimum of fuss, so perhaps that had been Spock’s intention all along. 

Fond amusement tingled down the doctor’s spine, as Spock did not even bother to slant an eyebrow in that thought’s direction, and instead nodded gently at Jim’s only slightly grumbled. 

“Whatever you think it best gentlemen.” 

Bones can’t quite pass up an opening like that, even in the relatively mellowing twilight of comfortable middle age. 

“What I would think best Jim would have been never coming on this fool’s sojourn in the first place.” 

He’s still grumbling when they’ve picked their way out of the underbrush to find a road. 

Spock’s earnest, “We must now partake in the ancient tradition of hitching a hike” did, unsurprisingly, absolutely nothing to lighten his mood. 

 

00

Bones prefers not to think about how they lost track of Jim. Jim himself refuses to ever discuss the topic again. Spock arches an eyebrow that Bones finally has confirmation really is the Vulcan equivalent of a snigger, and says nothing. 

Privately, Bones always blames the squirrels. They don’t have those in the twenty-third century. Or at least, they didn’t used to. 

In the years following, Bones watches a grey tail disappear up a nearby tree with a sigh, and offers Spock the remains of his depleted trail mix. 

Enough said. 

00

They find the cupcakes before they find Jim. 

Or rather, Bones finds them, stepping on something squishy and distinctly pink. 

There is rain sheeting down all around them, the car an intact but powerless bunch of metal and tires far behind them. 

“Spock?” Said Vulcan pauses in his trudging-Vulcans apparently hated water in all forms, not just the kind that was deep enough to swim in-to shoot a look so covertly miserable at Leonard that he was tempted to offer the man his jacket for the tenth time-twelfth doctor-nope, not worth the wasted effort in this muck. 

“Yes Doctor?” Bones drew in a breath, then thought better of it. He just pointed at the pink sludge smeared along his boot heal, and sent a pulse of inquiry Spock’s way. 

Worryingly, it worked like a charm. There went the question of whether this thing worked both ways he guessed. 

“Yes, pink is not a colour that occurs naturally in this type of forest.” On the other hand, there were merits to not having to verbalize an entire conversation. 

Bones grinned, his cheeks stiff from the cold. Oh, Jim was going to hate this. 

Watching Spock shake water from his eyes for the hundredth time, Bones quickly banished any remaining guilt at that thought. Served him right for putting them through all this anyway. 

Leonard wrapped an arm around the Vulcan’s dangerously still shoulders, and attempted to shove body heat in his direction. “Come on Spock, let’s follow the cupcake road.” 

Spock practically pulsed with incredulity. 

Bones groaned, “Good God man, don’t tell me Amanda never introduced you to the Wizard of Oz?” 

Spock’s reply, if there was one, was swallowed up by the wind. 

00

They found Jim at the foot of the Chief-that was it, the Chief!-spitting out brightly coloured feathers and eyeing a family of distinctly predatory racoons that were perched at equidistant intervals around the neighboring trees, chittering menacingly. 

Bones opened his mouth, shut it with a distinct click, waved his medical scanner over their reacquired Captain-unsurprisingly, nothing but scratches. The man had more lives than Spock!-and promptly crossed his sodden arms over his chest. 

“Can we please all go home now Jim?” 

Jim spat a purple feather at him, his expression sullen. “I didn’t finish my climb yet.” 

Spock eyed the chittering trees thoughtfully. “My research into this period did not extend to the smaller varieties of local fauna Captain, but a would suggest by the tone of their calls that those creatures are not of a friendly predisposition towards you.” 

They decided to head home without Jim completing his climb. 

The walk down the mountain is wet. And long. 

They never do talk about how Jim acquired the feathers though. 

00

“Spock.” The reply was long suffering. “Yes doctor?” 

Bones starred at the small black box strapped to the Vulcan’s wrist for the hundredth time. “What is that?” The sigh was nearly audible this time. 

“It is the latest in portable communication technology of this time.” Spock pronounced technology the way other people might pronounce rats. 

Bones groaned. “That’s what you said about that Tree thing!” 

The sigh was actually audible this time, if only just barely. “It is called a Leaf doctor.” 

“Well, I call it a-“ Jim broke in from his nearby log, “Gentlemen, this pointless squabbling is getting us nowhere-“ 

Bones was opening his mouth to protest being lectured on proper behaviour by a man with pink feathers crusted to his eyebrows, when a surge of satisfaction slammed into his back. 

 

The welcome sound of Scotty’s voice crackled incredibly out of the little device, and Jim took another moment to brush ineffectually at the feathers encrusted to his jacket, slapping both of his companions heartily on the back before leaning over Spock’s wrist and intoning in his best Captain’s voice. 

“Three to beam up Mr. Scott.” Scotty crackles something back that might be intended to be vaguely reassuring. 

Something also chooses that moment to chitter warningly from a nearby tree, and Bones slowly turns his head to meet a set of beady black eyes. He freezes. Jim is naturally oblivious. 

Spock looks intrigued. 

Bones shoots the Vulcan his best glare, “Oh no, don’t even think about it Mr. Spock! I’m a doctor, not a zoo keep-“ 

Leonard McCoy never thought he would be grateful to feel the dreadfully familiar tingling of the transporter beam scrambling his molecules into a million pieces. 

But then, he clearly never anticipated being stuck in a forest in somewhere called Squamish, with a Captain covered in sequined feathers, a Vulcan wearing an apple watch, and a hungry racoon eyeing him from a tree. 

Thank heavens for Scotty indeed!


End file.
